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The Graduate: I will be a doctor, but you are illiterate and a &%*#*!

River Falls police had their hands full with a drunk 22-year-old male passenger around 1 a.m. Friday, May 17, at South Main and Broadway streets. The young man, from UW-River Falls, called himself a graduate, but when an officer checked on his welfare because he seemed sick, "the graduate" allegedly turned abusive, claiming he would be a doctor, then shouting at and cussing the officer, calling him uneducated and dumb, and later using racial insults.

At one point, after he kept putting a hand into his pocket and was told not to, the officer confiscated a small knife from his shorts pocket.

The man eventually tensed up and got in the officer's face as if ready to start fighting. Two officers subdued and arrested him for disorderly conduct, but he allegedly continued to scream at them at the top of his lungs.

The man failed booking at the police station and also failed booking at the Pierce County Jail in Ellsworth. He was placed in a holding cell.

The driver of the car where the man was a passenger, a 21-year-old UWRF female student from Burnsville, Minn., was arrested without incident for drunk driving. She said her companion has issues when he drinks.

Police also:

--Arrested a 22-year-old local man for battery and obstruction at 2 a.m. Monday, May 20, for what appeared to be a four-man brawl, with one of the men briefly lying unconscious in the road at South Main and Locust streets. One of the assailants got away. The 22-year-old ran and was soon found hiding in bushes of the courtyard of Ezekiel Lutheran Church. After being spotted, he raced out, slipped, then ran into a nearby parking sign pole and fell. By then he surrendered. He told an officer he was drinking, had met some guys outside the bar, felt they were about to jump him, acted in self-defense but couldn't remember much else. His knuckles were marked up. He was given two citations totaling more than $600.

--Arrested a 30-year-old Greenwood man for disorderly conduct at 127 S. Main St. at 1 a.m. Sunday. The man allegedly was urinating on someone's car. People saw it and got angry. The man's girlfriend tried to move him. A bouncer from Coach's Bar heard the disturbance, came out, told the man to stop, that there was a municipal fine for public urination. The man allegedly said, "Who cares, I make $50,000 a year." He also allegedly swung at the bouncer, who then took him to the ground, holding him, while someone called 911. Officers arrived. The man was arrested and given a $177 citation.

For more, please read Police Beat in the May 23 print edition of the River Falls Journal.